Why Nature Matters: In Our Gardens and Our Countryside

So wrote the idiosyncratic American poet e.e. cummings in Chansons Innocentes: I, expressing a child’s wide-eyed wonderment and joy upon encountering puddles in early spring. We are all born with this sense of awe but as we grow towards adulthood a lack of exposure to the wonder and intriguing ‘otherness’ of the natural world can blunt this fascination and ultimately extinguish it.

Nature in the Garden

Last year, when I asked readers why we love to garden, many of the responses linked gardening with an innate connection to nature and the landscape, often first experienced as a child. Joanne explained that when she was young:

I felt this connection, an enjoyment, a love and nurturing feeling and my passion for plants, flowers and soil was born…

and another gardener, whose love for growing began in 1938 when she first entered ‘the wondrous kingdom of the allotment’, wrote:

[to] sit and watch our own small wildlife going about their daily lives is as good as it gets.

Kids need access to the natural world in gardens and the countryside. Image credit: Plantlife/Kim Newman

Whether it’s the ability of my tithonia to produce its flaming blooms at the height of my daughter’s head within a year from sowing the claw-shaped seeds or the subterranean mycorrhizal networks connecting the plants in our borders, it’s this fascination with the power and precision of nature that draws many of us into a lifelong relationship with our gardens.

Nature in the Wider Landscape

So much has changed since I was a kid – the 1970s are my baseline – but the decline in habitat and species began far earlier…

I’ve been captivated by plants, their habitats and the ecosystems which they support, for as long as I can remember, fostered by a childhood spent in red wellies (if the family album is to be believed) helping my dad dig in our vegetable patch, foraging in the Welsh countryside with my grandparents and birdwatching as a member of the Young Ornithologists Club. Since the 1970s and 80s – the decades of my childhood – there has been a dramatic reduction of natural habitat in the UK and an equally rapid decline in populations of a whole range of species, including farmland birds, hedgehogs and insects. In addition, shifting baseline syndrome adjusts our collective memory as each generation believes that their baseline is the original ‘normal’.

Even with the statistics from the 2016 State of Nature Report readily available, with the evidence that in terms of biodiversity we are ‘among the most nature-depleted countries in the world’¹, we continue to sanction the destruction of natural habitat referring to passive ‘losses’ of species like the apple bumblebee, the frosted yellow moth, the Kentish plover and the wryneck, instead of extinctions brought about by human action. As Sir David Attenborough states in the introduction to the State of Nature Report:

Our wonderful nature is in serious trouble and it needs our help
as never before.

For this reason, I joined the People’s Walk for Wildlife last weekend: a peaceful family event attended by around 10,000 people. We walked from Hyde Park to Downing Street to express our shared love of nature and highlight the catastrophic consequences of continuing to destroy our ecosystems and wildlife. Chris Packham and six young conservationists handed A People’s Manifesto for Wildlife to the government. This draft manifesto is a collection of short essays and practical steps written by 18 experts, which if implemented today would make a huge difference for wildlife tomorrow.

A Part of Nature, Not Apart From It

Within our private gardens, enclosed by boundary hedges, fences and walls, it’s easy to believe we exist apart from the surrounding countryside, but in reality each garden is a part of the whole landscape – the way we treat the plants, insects, birds, animals, water and soil in our gardens affects what happens beyond our boundaries, on a local and national level and, conversely, changes in the countryside directly affect our gardens.

On a practical level, our gardens need access to healthy populations of beneficial insects – bees, butterflies, moths, and even wasps to pollinate flowers, creating seeds for subsequent years and fruits to harvest; we need ladybirds, toads and birds to act as pest control in place of the chemicals that simply exacerbate the ecosystem problems. At a deeper level, we need nature in our lives to enable us relax, to feel part of a seasonal, more natural rhythm of life, to inspire, give solace and to improve our general mental health. Fortunately, the symbiotic nature of the relationship between our gardens and the wider landscape means that any practical steps we take to improve the natural health of our gardens can have far reaching consequences…

This waxwing was such an inspirational sight and a wonderful reminder that my garden is part of the local landscape. Image credit: Alan Garner

Practical Steps

With over 400,000 hectares² of garden habitat across the UK, gardeners are in a position to make a real difference. Here are a few ideas arising from A People’s Manifesto for Wildlife…

1. Rewild Our Gardens

We’re unlikely to be in a position to reintroduce beavers or longhorn cattle as Isabella Tree and her husband, Charlie Burrell, have on the Knepp Estate (as Isabella recounts in her ground-breaking book Wilding), but we can all make a space for the wild in our gardens. We know that introducing ponds, long grass, log piles, trees and hedges, and leaving stems and seedheads over winter in our gardens creates food and habitats for a wide range of animals. Even in a small garden, containers with plants for pollinators (single flowers, rather than doubles) and a bird feeder can bring in wildlife from the local area.

This August, at the Great British Birdfair, I met the Butterfly Brothers. Their award-winning wildlife garden designs focus on attracting butterflies to the garden, but they also spoke passionately about the dragonflies, moths and birds which visit the gardens. Jim and Joel have a YouTube channelwith practical ideas for encouraging wildlife into the garden and also more information on British butterflies like the ringlet and the chequered skipper. And even if you live somewhere where ringlets are unlikely to visit your garden (we’ve had whites including green-veined, gatekeeper, peacock, red admiral and small tortoiseshell, but never a ringlet), adding a bird box for tits or house sparrows or a hole at the bottom of the fence to give hedgehogs a passageway, makes every garden a little wilder.

2. Garden Organically

Dave Goulson, Professor of Biology at Sussex University, bee expert and author of a number of books, including A Sting in the Tail, has written the proposals addressing pesticide use. Whilst these proposals are primarily aimed at agricultural use, there is still the issue of pesticide use in gardens and by commercial growers.

The RHS advice to its members and to ‘millions of other gardeners’ is ‘to avoid using pesticides’. Organic methods help create a sustainable environment for beneficial wildlife like blue tits and ladybirds, which act as natural pest control. Using physical barriers and biological controls is often extremely effective, and if I have holes in some of my hosta leaves when the slugs breach the copper tape barriers, at least I know my plants are part of a natural cycle and nothing I’ve put on the garden will have harmed the toads, hedgehogs and birds that live alongside us.

3. Embrace your Growing Space

Garden writer, Kate Bradbury has written the proposals for urban spaces in A People’s Manifesto for Wildlife. She begins by discussing the RHS report which found that 24% of front gardens had been lost to paving, concrete or gravel by 2016, as compared to only 8% in 2005. The report suggests that by 2016 more than 4.5 million of Britain’s front gardens were completely paved, and 7.2 million mostly paved. As these spaces disappear, as back gardens are given over to offices, fake grass, decking and low-maintenance paving, and as more gardens become fenced, Kate points out that wild creatures such as amphibians and hedgehogs are excluded from our gardens. Without access through gardens and with the added dangers of roads, it is difficult for many animals to travel through their territories. By making our gardens accessible, we can help to create wildlife corridors and improve the chances of these animals.

I joined Plantlife earlier this year when I read that the RHS (of which I’m also a member) has around 500,000 members whilst Plantlife, a charity working to save threatened flowers, plants and fungi, has only 11,000. I love my garden and believe that growing ornamental and edible plants is one of the great joys of life, but my garden is part of a wider landscape – a landscape I treasure and want to help conserve.

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We are fortunate that the wild forests are more appealing than any sort of landscape we can add to the area. We landscape only around buildings. Guest expect to enjoy the natural environment and redwood forests.

Thank you Ali – ‘the magic on the doorstep’ is the essence of a garden for me too. A transitional place where we can work with nature in a practical and emotional way in a society that seems to have forgotten that we, ourselves, are part of the natural world.

What a great post! It’s really helpful to have some practical ways to bring more wildlife into our gardens. I was also on the People’s Walk for Wildlife and thought it was a brilliant event. It was amazing to see so many people on the streets. Shame it wasn’t reported more.

Yes it deserved much more attention that it got in the media. It’s such an important issue and there’s so much we can all do collectively. Hopefully the People’s Walk for Wildlife is the start of new attitudes – along with the People’s Talks for Wildlife next year all around the UK.

Your wonderful, brilliant blog on why nature matters is what our website http://nearbywild.org.uk is all about and was created to celebrate and increase biodiversity where we live, just beyond our own doorstep. The idea was inspired by Robert Macfarlane’s “The Wild Places”. There are blogs about how I transformed my lawn into a beautiful nearby wild where wildlife live and visit throughout the seasons. The blogs were also written to inspire and inform readers how to start their own meadows. We are drawn to the wild because we were originally hunter-gatherers with a deep connection to wild places. http://nearbywild.org.uk/jos-mini-meadow-1how-transformed-lawn-into-beautiful-nearbywild/
I also blog about wildlife in my local area and there are quick guides to enable you to identify similar species and to encourage coexistence with Nature which we are all part of and which Thich Nhat Hanh calls ‘Interbeing’.

Hi Josephine – glad you enjoyed the post. Thank you for adding the link to your blog – I found your posts on growing a mini meadow really interesting and I’m also inspired by Rob’s writing and the (really common sense notion) that we are, ourselves, part of the natural ecosystems, even if we’ve forgotten! Good luck with your meadow and the blog!

Dogwooddays Blog

Hi, thanks for visiting the blog. I’m Nic – a garden and nature writer based in Hertfordshire. I’m also a peat-free gardener, keen birdwatcher, inveterate bookworm and mum to two budding growers. Join me as I follow my crops from plot to plate, explore new plants and share the wonder and beauty of the nature world…

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Nic Wilson and Dogwooddays do not take any responsibility for any adverse effects from the use of plants. Always seek advice from a professional before using a plant medicinally. Always ensure it is legal to forage and where identification is concerned, if in doubt, leave it out.